


View

by IggyBlue



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Gen, gen - Freeform, slight angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-06
Updated: 2015-10-06
Packaged: 2018-04-25 02:59:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4944124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IggyBlue/pseuds/IggyBlue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bulma is a scientist, and Vegeta is the most complex feat of engineering the universe has handed to her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	View

Vegeta attributes way too much of what he is to his ancestry, Bulma thinks. He draws his own ideas of identity from what he was told as a child - a curious dichotomy between what his father, the reigning Saiyan king, told him, and what his eventual overlord Frieza would have him believe. And it seems his self-perception is based solely on a foggy, anecdotal understanding of a people he never knew.

And as much as Vegeta detested Frieza, Bulma's of the opinion that years under the fiend's tight control shaped his self-perception, as loath as Vegeta might be to admit it, even to himself.

Vegeta's view is strict, and he only thinks in a binary of wins and failures. Sometimes Bulma looks at him, trying to project onto his masked expressions what might be going on in his head. She thinks perhaps his mind is preoccupied with charts and diagrams of his win to failure count, colour coded by category. She wonders what colour scheme he would choose. Blood red, carcass blue, pus yellow, she supposes. He wouldn't bother with secondary colours - what a waste of time that would be. Just the necessary. Because you don't need purple to survive.

He doesn't seem to enjoy much at all, if anything. She tries to bring to his attention things that are generally viewed as pleasurable, yet he persists in brushing away anything he deems unnecessary. He has tunnel-vision, but she wants him to see. There's so much to see that he seems unable to behold.

Telling doesn't work, she observes, so she moves onto the power of suggestion.

One night, when he is calm and sated in her bed, she lazily asks him, what next?

What next after what, he grumbles in response.

What after he achieves his goal? What will that mean for him?

He remains silent. This is what she wanted. Though it's cruel to introduce existential angst into the mix of darkness clouding his psyche, she knows he's faced far worse and survived. And with that, she places a hand to his shoulders, gently massaging tight muscles underneath a sheen of coarse, scarred skin. She wants him to feel the moment, to be present and not a million miles away in his mind, like he usually is. Wants him to listen and hear the rhythm of their shared breaths in the late night. Wants him to feel the peace that's around him and accept it as his own.

But that would be too much. He's too conditioned by hate, he is motivated by punishment and not praise. And he responds far more diligently to negative emotion, to the degree he doesn't seem to feel anything resembling a high anymore. If there were highs for him to have in the first place.

Sex was only a bandaid. It was mindful and present, it was aware and feeling and it was directed to the left off the singular path that led him to his goals. But it was short-lived in the grand scheme, and she had to find a way to get to him for good.

Bulma is a scientist, and Vegeta is the most complex feat of engineering the universe has handed to her. As months grow into years with him, she vows silently to herself to use her life to understand him, to make him feel the peace that's eluded him all his war-torn life. To solve whatever mysteries there are within him, to tug on every string until the knot comes undone.

With every wrong move, she is stung by his bitter loathing. Like a cornered animal, he will lash out. She will get hurt, but she will die trying to get to him, if need be. To save him from wounds he doesn't know he has. If she gets hurt by his sharp defences, at the very least, his hatred will be directed outside of himself as a reprieve.

She knows he's not a project in the way her usual projects are, her mechanical tinkerings that evolve into machines of great and purposeful use on behalf of the Capsule Corporation. He's not a thing; he's a living, breathing, experiencing person. His mind isn't so much a problem that needs to be solved, and he's not broken and in need of repair, he's an independent and intelligent man. He is a survivor, and how he has survived the things she discovers of his past bewilders her. For what did he survive so stubbornly? Perhaps defiance. A need to prove himself. But to who, she doesn't know. For what purpose, eludes her.

He is a work of art in his infinite complexity. Brilliant, elegant, tragic. And she will spend her life observing him through eyes conditioned to search for logic and meaning.

Just as you can gaze into the night sky, she supposes, and see infinite black, so can the most casual of glances into Vegeta's mind appear impossibly dark. That's only if you don't understand. You have to look for light to see it, to search it out. You have to wait patiently for it to appear before you. 

And though light pollution shades her view of the night, sitting there in companionable silence with him on the rooftop of the building, Bulma sees a sky brimming with stars.


End file.
